Monday, May 16

Mountains May Depart

Exclusive Area Premiere Engagement May 13–16

(2015) dir Jia Zhangke w/Sylvia Chang, Dong Zijian. Liang Jingdong, Zhang Yi, Zhao Tao [131 min; DCP]
Beginning in 1999 in the Chinese city of Fenyang (birthplace of director Jia Zhangke), MOUNTAINS MY DEPART tells the intertwining tale of three childhood friends: Liangzi, a coal miner, Zhang, the owner of a gas station, and Tao, the town beauty. Charming and naïve, Tao is torn in her affections for the two men but eventually marries the more assertive Zhang. Flash forward to 2014 as Tao has divorced the money-hungry Zhang who subsequently emigrates to Australia with their young son, tellingly named Dollar. For the last third of the film, Jia brings us into the future: Australia in 2025. Dollar is now 19 and can barely communicate with his now bankrupt father.

Chinese master Jia Zhangke scales new heights with MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART. At once an intimate drama and a decades-spanning epic that leaps from the recent past to the present to the speculative near-future, Jia’s new film is an intensely moving study of how China’s economic boom and the culture of materialism has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.

★★★★ “A mysterious and in its way staggeringly ambitious piece of work from a film-maker whose creativity is evolving before our eyes.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian